Open Cities

The Open Cities flagship project aims to contribute to making cities more open and equal places around the world. The questions we ask are:
- How can a city become (more) or remain open for various socio-cultural groups and non-human life?
- How do we shape open cities in response to global urban challenges ranging from massive inequality to devastating climate change?
- How can we imagine possibilities for such an Open City and how can we work towards their realization?

On the level of the city, we encounter intersection of various socio-economic, ecological and spatial challenges. To engage with the complexity of this intersection, we recognize an urgency and also possibilities for bringing together research, teaching and also experimentation to develop productive proposals. For this, we need interdisciplinary, inter-professional and international collaborations. The project pursues research-led education to produce future global professionals who can contribute to making open cities.
Open City Network
This flagship project is part of the Open City Network. This network aims to facilitate and inspire interdisciplinary, inter-professional, and international collaborations between scholars, students, cultural practitioners, policy makers, and civic communities. Collaborators are invited to critically reflect on, and designing proposals for, how cities and their institutions transform in response to various local and global developments that bring about challenges as well as opportunities for institutional and societal change in the Global South and the Global North.
Meet our team:
Project leaders
dr. Kei Otsuki
Email: k.otsuki@uu.nl